-verb: The act of grasping your cell phone firmly in one of your hands, extending your arm, and moving your arm across an area in a right to left motion(or vice versa)in an attempt to find signal in places with little or no reception.

1. I began signal sweeping in my friends basement until I had enough bars to send the text message.

2. Michael frantically began signal sweeping to find reception so he could call back his girl friend.